The Member of Parliament for North Tongu Constituency, Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has disclosed that unlike previous years, government has done the right thing by making specific allocations towards the National Cathedral project in the 2023 budget.
This follows after the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta revealed that all of government’s expenditures in respect to the project, were derived from Contingency Vote.
“After all the lawlessness, deception, falsehood, illogicality and dishonesty about the National Cathedral being a Contingency Project; the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia/Ofori-Atta government has finally been forced to do what is right by capturing a specific allocation of GHS80million at page 195 in the 2023 Budget for parliamentary approval.”
Okudzeto Ablakwa, MP
When Mr. Ofori-Atta appeared before the Parliamentary censure motion ad hoc committee, he explained that the Contingency Vote was the statutory allocation for all of government’s unforeseen expenditures at the time of the preparation of the budget.
“In preparing the annual budgets, the practice is that provision is made for indicative expenditures that have not been fully costed at the time of the budget presentation,” Mr. Ofori-Atta explained.
The Finance Minister cited funds for the 2014 FIFA World cup and the ongoing 2022 edition as being from the Contingency Vote.
Since the Contingency Vote is for unbudgeted expenditures, Ofori-Atta insinuated that government did not anticipate it would spend on the National Cathedral project.
This, Okudzeto Ablakwa who himself was a member of the committee, found to be false and dishonest. “God’s Temple cannot be built on a sinful foundation of dishonesty,” Okudzeto wrote.
The National Cathedral Saga
In the Auditor-General’s report for the financial year 2021, the government of Ghana had spent ¢142 million on the National Cathedral project.
In 2019 when the project was first announced by the Finance Minister, it was estimated to cost over $100 million. An amount that has since been changed to $340 million.
Prior to the Auditor-General’s report, Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa brought out a document alleging that an amount of GH¢200 million was paid by government towards the construction of the project.
The North Tongu MP claimed government paid the monies without seeking Parliamentary approvals.
Okudzeto also revealed that the Executive Director of the Cathedral’s Board of Trustees, Dr. Paul Opoku Mensah, was on government’s pay roll.
“The Executive Director of the Secretariat, a Secretariat presented as a private entity, has also been enlisted as a Presidential staffer and his position there is an overseer of the National Cathedral,” Okudzeto disclosed.
Meanwhile, the project was said to be a fulfillment of a personal pledge President Akufo-Addo made to God and so, upon Okudzeto Ablakwa’s revelations, many Ghanaians questioned why public funds were used to sponsor the project.
The weeks that followed the revelations saw many Ghanaians and pressure groups backlash government.
